CHILLING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does chilling mean? 

• CHILLING (noun)
  The noun CHILLING has 1 sense:

1. the process of becoming cooler; a falling temperature

  Familiarity information: CHILLING used as a noun is very rare.

• CHILLING (adjective)
  The adjective CHILLING has 1 sense:

1. provoking fear terror

  Familiarity information: CHILLING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHILLING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The process of becoming cooler; a falling temperature

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural processes

Synonyms:

chilling; cooling; temperature reduction

Hypernyms ("chilling" is a kind of...):

temperature change (a process whereby the degree of hotness of a body (or medium) changes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "chilling"):

freeze; freezing (the withdrawal of heat to change something from a liquid to a solid)

heat dissipation (dissipation of heat)

infrigidation; refrigeration (the process of cooling or freezing (e.g., food) for preservative purposes)

Derivation:

chill (loose heat)

chill (make cool or cooler)

• CHILLING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Provoking fear terror

Synonyms:

chilling; scary; shivery; shuddery

Context example:

the most terrible and shuddery...tales of murder and revenge

Similar:

alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)

 Context examples 

He squirmed over the wet moss, saturating his clothes and chilling his body; but he was not aware of it, so great was his fever for food.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Then I looked in all the other open rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear chilling my heart.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I had no sensation whatever in my lower limbs, while a chilling numbness was wrapping about my heart and creeping into it.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly numbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The initial symptoms of the disease are similar across all malaria types (fever, chilling, headache and body aches) but the disease may become more severe depending on the causative agent.

(Biosensor promises early malaria diagnosis, SciDev.Net)

Having stripped his robe, I had no choice but to let him have the wearing of my good leathern jerkin and hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to the blood and unseemly to the eye to stand frockless whilst I made my orisons.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In surgery, the time between the chilling of a tissue, organ, or body part after its blood supply has been reduced or cut off and the time it is warmed by having its blood supply restored.

(Cold ischemia time, NCI Dictionary)

I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)